HYDERABAD: International Institute of Information Technology, (IIIT) Hyderabad’s intellectual properties are being made public through an in-house Application Programming Interface (API) gateway, originally created as part of the Central government’s ongoing Bahu Bhashak project.An API is an interface which allows two software to communicate with each other. For instance, one will use an API if he/she accesses information of the weather through Google. Through IIIT-H’s API gateway, citizens can access various innovations that IIIT-H researchers have been working on.
Over two years ago, researchers at the institute had started working on this gateway as part of course work, but it hit multiple roadblocks and had to be shelved. It was when the Central government’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology requested for language technology APIs through its Bahu Bhashak initiative that the project got a shot-in-the-arm.
Now, the project has been resumed, and IIIT-H researchers are making language APIs available on its gateway. “We are now in the process of building small applications so that anyone interested can easily access them, tinker around and get a sense of the way things work,” said Prakash Yalla, Head, TTO & Product Labs of IIIT-Hyderabad.
“For the next one or two years, the initiative will continue to be hand held by Product Labs, but the idea is to make it more self-serviced so that each lab will be able to upload their tech APIs by themselves on the gateway,” he added.
Explaining how this initiative would benefit enthusiasts, IIIT-H professor Ramesh Loganathan said, “While earlier the institute’s focus was on publications and conferences, now there’s very high importance given to technology translation and making sure the work done here is getting used by somebody, somewhere, somehow. So there’s a much higher buy-in for faculty to make their research available as APIs.”